Trailblazing Gloucester (MA) woman honored for keeping lighthouses ablaze during 1864 storm
Thatchers Island lighthouses
The Boston Globe published an interesting article about Maria Herrick Bray,
a West Gloucester native who ran up and down the stairs of two lighthouses to fill the tanks of whale oil, trim the wicks, and keep the lanterns burning as a snowstorm enveloped the Gloucester-Rockport coast (Her husband, the head lighthouse keeper, was ill, and had been taken to the mainland.)
And for your students, take a look at our new episode, Lighthouses and our Nation.
Photo of Thatcher’s Island lighthouses: Detroit Publishing Co, P. (1905) Thatcher's sic Island, Rockport, Mass. United States Thacher Island Massachusetts, 1905. [?] [Photograph] Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/2016811696/.